


Stories from the Sofa Fortress

by tinamachina



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 18:19:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1657949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinamachina/pseuds/tinamachina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glimpse of Squall's early childhood, through the eyes of Elle at the Orphanage.  The young boy wants to know about his parents, and then makes a promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stories from the Sofa Fortress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ane_Rhapsodos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ane_Rhapsodos/gifts).



> For DOINK '14: "Squall: 'have fun and do what you want' request".

It was a gloriously sunny, warm summer day, and the children of the orphanage were swimming and making sand castles on the beach, except for one little boy.

Elle found this little boy hidden away in a sofa fort that he constructed for himself, built square in the middle of the living room.

“Hey,” Elle knelt at the opening of the cushion cave, “Why aren’t you playing with the other boys?” 

“I don’t wanna,” Squall pouted.  The five-year-old seemed perfectly content to stay in his cave as he vigorously doodled with his crayons.

“But it’s a nice day outside,” Elle tried to coax him out, even though she knew how stubborn he could be. 

“I don’t wanna play with them!”  Squall sat fast, and Elle could hear the harsh scratch of wax against paper.

“Why not?”  The little girl asked gently.

“’Cause Seifie’s always picking on me,” Squall whined.  “Zell always eats all of Matron’s snacks and never shares and his hands are always crumby and stuff!   And Irvy always wanted to play with the girls,” the disgust could be heard in the last word of Squall’s sentence.  “Girls are icky.”

“But I’m a girl.”

“No you’re not!”  Squall said incredulously.  “You’re Sis!  You’re different.   You’re…bigger, and cooler.  And you know all the cool stories.”

Elle was only ten, but the kids all looked to her as the other adult in the house besides Matron.  And to little baby Squall, Elle was so much more.  From the moment that baby Squall and his “Sis” came to the stone house by the beach, they were inseparable.  Squall had eyes for no one else but Elle.  As a toddler, he would follow her everywhere.  While he was a quiet, shy little boy who showed little interest in playing with the other orphans, he seemed more at ease hanging out with Elle, drawing pictures and listening to her bedtime stories of knights and witches and evil emperors.

Elle poked her head into the fort, “Do you want me to tell you a story?  I know a really long one about a girl sorceress who fought an evil Emperor with an army of Moogles…”

“That sounds like a baby story,” Squall was not impressed.  “I wanna hear a story about Mama and Papa.  You know any stories about them?”

Elle went quiet.  She had dozens of stories of her beloved lost “Uncle” Laguna, but…

“Elle?”  Squall poked his head out of his fort, seemingly troubled by Elle’s silence, “Why won’t you tell me about Mama and Papa?”

Even from an early age, Elle was taught not to lie by her parents, by her “Auntie” Raine and “Uncle” Laguna.  “It makes me sad” was the truth, but that sounded too selfish. 

“Because I don’t want to make you sad,” Elle answered instead, because that was also the truth.

“Are they in heaven?”  Squall asked, “Because when we found that sick seagull and he went to sleep and he wouldn’t wake up, Matron said that all living beings go to heaven.”

Elle felt that tickle in her throat like a sob was coming on, but she swallowed it back, “Your Mama is in heaven.”

“What about Papa?”

“He’s…somewhere very far away.  He’s alive, I think.”

Squall jumped up, almost knocking the roof off of his fort, “He’s ALIVE?  Where is he?!” 

“It’s…it’s tricky,” Elle tried to explain.  “You see…”  And Elle told Squall about how a badly hurt soldier came to town, and how “Auntie” Raine fixed him up.  She told him how they fell in love and got married in the old bar that was filled with white flowers.  She told Squall how “Uncle” Laguna made little Elle the “Captain of the Monster Hunting Squad” and they would wander the countryside searching for monsters to chase away…

“No baby stories, Elle!”  Squall stomped his foot.  “Monsters aren’t real!”

“Some monsters are,” Elle insisted calmly.  “Some monsters are humans like you and me.  One monster was a sorceress and she…”

“Isn’t Matron a Sorceress?”  Squall interrupted.  “I see her using magic to cure boo-boos sometimes.”

Squall seemed so much more mature than his five years that it surprised Elle to hear him use kiddie words like “boo-boo”.

“Yeah,” Elle replied.  “But this one wasn’t as nice as Matron.  She wasn’t very nice at all.  Her soldiers took me away to this faraway city.  She locked me in a big metal room.  I was so scared.  I was afraid of never seeing Raine and Laguna again, but I knew your Papa would find me.  He’s the strongest, most bravest…”

“Why didn’t Papa come back?”  Squall interrupted again.  “Why isn’t he here?  Why don’t we live with him?”

Elle could feel the tears welling in her eyes, “Because the bad sorceress had to be locked away, but ‘Uncle’ Laguna had to stay and watch her until it was safe.  So he sent me home, but ‘Auntie’ Raine was already having a baby.  That baby was you, Squall.  I was his ‘captain’ and I had to keep her and you safe until your papa came home.”

“But…”  Squall looked down at his rough doodles of a silver lion, “he didn’t come home.  If he did, we wouldn’t be here, right?”

Elle fought back a sob, “Your mama got sick.  Your mama went to heaven, where my Mama and Papa are.  We couldn’t stay in ‘Auntie’ Raine’s house anymore.  So now,” Elle took Squall’s little hand, “as Captain, it is my duty to protect you from monsters until Laguna comes back.”

“He’s not coming back,” Squall said sadly.  “He forgot all about us.”

Elle felt a cold chill.  Laguna never saw Raine pregnant.  What if he really did not know that Squall was out there?  What if he didn’t know that Elle was away from her old home and waiting for him on a faraway beach?  Then the idea came to Elle like a firework, “Then we go looking for him!”

Squall jumped up, his face bright with excitement, “Yeah!  We can get a boat, and then we can sail the ocean and look for Papa and bring him home!”

“But Squall,” Elle said, “you’re still too little to row a boat across an ocean.  We need lots and lots of strength.”

“That’s okay, Sis,” Squall said, “I’m gonna exercise and grow up big and strong and then I’ll have lots of strength to take us far, far away!  Let’s not forget, Sis!  We’re gonna go together, right?”   He held out a little hand.

“Right!”  Elle took his hand and shook it firmly.   “I won’t forget!”

“Squall, Elle,” Matron walked into the room, “Are we playing castle with the sofa again?”

“Nah, just drawing,” Squall held up his doodle of the silver lion.  “Seifie breaks my crayons so I was hiding.  Oh, Matron!  Sis and I are gonna go sailing across the ocean to look for Papa when we get bigger!”

Matron smiled gently, nodding her head, “That’s wonderful, Squall.  Elle, can you help me in the kitchen for just a moment?”

“Yes, Matron,” Elle replied.  “I’ll come back, Squallie!  I can tell more stories later!”

Squall sat back into his sofa fort as Elle disappeared into the kitchen.  “I’m not gonna forget, not like Papa.”  He took another piece of paper and a blue crayon.  “I’m gonna go far away with Sis, and I’m gonna fight off monsters and we’re gonna find Papa!  I’m not gonna forget…”

 

“You didn’t forget,” It was twelve years later and Ellone stood next to Squall, as they gazed out over the ocean from the large windows of the commander’s office.

“Yeah, I did,” Squall sighed.  “Wasn’t really my fault.  The GF’s…”

“I know,” Elle ruffled his hair, “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Squall looked to Elle with guilt in his eyes, “I made a promise…”

“And you kept it,” Elle interrupted.  “Look at you.  You got big and strong.  You went and found me and Laguna!  Maybe we didn’t bring him back but…”

“He’s alive.  He’s okay.  It’s enough.  I understand everything now, thanks to you,” Squall tapped the side of his head.

Elle and Squall stood quietly, watching the ocean roll beneath the floating Garden.

“So, do you wanna hear another story?”  Elle asked.

“Matron’s couch somehow wound up in Cid’s office,” Squall said with a smirk.  “In the right configuration, it barely fits two adults.”

“Let’s not be adults today,” Elle smiled, and in the commander’s office, within the old, comforting confines of a worn-out, disassembled sofa, Elle and Squall began to catch up on a lifetime of stories.


End file.
